Victoria Night Market

Last night I had a 'first'!  I went to the Suzuki Night Market In Melbourne.  I'm a little appalled at myself for only having just made it along.  I've heard so many good things about it - why did I not visit before now?!  Oh Lordy, it was good!  It was a feast for the eyes and ma belly!  Melbourne just has the best markets in my opinion and last night was great.  There was music, cool stalls, the atmosphere was electric and the people were having a great time.  Just perfect!  

In the end I ate Mexican quesidillas and drank the most sublime sangria....pictured below.  Delicious!

Some good looking paella...

The light coming in from the roof was lovely...

I must find a good sangria recipe, this stuff was so good.  Tonnes of cinnamon and orange and just the right amount of red wine goodness!

KINGS OF CONVENIENCE

I love this Norwegian band 'The Kings of Convenience'. I have done since the first time I saw their video clip for 'I'd Rather Dance With You' way back in 2004.  I saw the video on MTV at a friend's boyfriend's house one afternoon and immediately went out and found as much as I could about these two.  I have been a fan ever since.  

A few years ago I was luck to see them play in Barcelona at the Poble Espanyol.  The whole night was completely magical.  It was a warm summer night, we were drinking Spanish beers and as the sun went down the fairy lights came on and these guys played about 3 hours of pure loveliness!  

They are playing at the Laneway Festival in Melbourne next Sunday the 3rd of February which I am going to - whoopee!  I can't wait to see them again!  Frankie magazine did an interview with Eirik here.

Geelong Figures

Last week I was in Geelong having a picnic down by the waterfront as part of my special birthday day out (which was totally lovely).  These fantastic wooden sculptures were in the park and I took a few photos.  I didn't realise but there are actually over 100 of these wooden bollards scattered along the Waterfront of Geelong, which represent local history and characters.  They were made by artist, Jan Mitchell, more information here.  Aren't they just fabulous!

Sunflowers

I love sunflowers.  Their happy little yellow faces always make me smile when I see them.  These are my birthday sunflowers which are still going strong after a week of intense heat in Melbourne.  They are right beside my bed and they are the first thing I see in the morning and the last thing I see at night (oh and also my husband ha ha!).

Buttons Galore!

A few years ago my dad gave me a big box of buttons.  He used to have his blacksmith workshop in a skip yard in Scotland and every so often a skip full of random stuff would come into the yard.  Sometimes it would be a skip from a house clearance, perhaps after someone has died or moved house, or sometimes from shops.  One year all our family got Calvin Klein perfume for Christmas after dad found a massive pile of the stuff in a skip! The boxes had been damaged so the shop couldn't sell them.  Bonus for us!  Anyway, back to the point....the box of buttons.  I've had this box for years now and I shipped it to Australia with us because I knew it was too good to throw out.  This week I decided to start sorting through it and sort the buttons into colours.  Not only were there buttons, there were all sorts of habidashery and little clues about the previous owner.  I found an envelop addressed to 'Mr I Kilgour' and a fabric name tag which reads 'Margaret Kilgour'.  The envelope has an Edinburgh address and a post mark date of 1989.

I suppose some people might think it a bit mean to be going through someone else's belongings in such a way, but I don't.  These treasures would have been thrown to land fill if dad hadn't found them and passed them on to me.  I love thinking about the Kilgours and about the amount of years that they had been collecting these buttons.  There are some very old looking ones in here....

There was a great cigar box (pictured here) which had test tubes of different coloured buttons inside it...

White buttons are by far the most popular colour...

Quite a lot of the buttons are still attached to the original packaging material...

The name tag...

The postage mark reads 'EDINBURGH 9AM, 31 MCH 1989'...

I sorted the buttons into colours and put them into glass jars for display...

Agapanthus

At the moment Melbourne is full of beautiful Agapanthus and they are just lovely!  The other morning I was out running and took these photos.  I think I will have to have a go at drawing some of these beautiful flowers...

'Dancing Barefoot' First Aid Kit / Patti Smith

A few days ago Chris and I were driving back from our great New Years getaway on Phillip Island listening to RRR radio and we were delighted to hear the Swedish band, First Aid Kit on the show selecting artists and songs that influence them.  It was great and I really liked their choice of music.  

One thing they mentioned was how they played a Patti Smith song, Dancing Barefoot, at the Polar Music awards the year that Patti Smith was awarded (see clip above).  If you watch this clip you can see Patti Smith actually cries.  It's lovely!

Another song that I liked 'Save Me' by Aimmee Mann.  Lovely!

An Afternoon at the Antique Warehouse

Yesterday I had a fabulous afternoon rummaging around the Waverley Antique Bazaar in Glen Waverley (11a Aristoc Road, Glen Waverley, Victoria, Australia 3150, tel 03 9560 4284).  This place is huge and packed to the rafters of interesting, quirky, rusty, beautiful things - my kind of place!  Here are some pictures as you can see it is choc-a-bloc with great stuff...

I'm going back for this chair tomorrow, fingers crossed it's still there!

Wonderfully arranged books in colours....

Hello little koala!

Porcelain Christmas Decorations

This week I had the chance to play around with some porcelain, led by my very knowledgable friend Jenny. Armed with a pile of newly purchased cookie cutters I rolled and cut out these shapes. For a textural finish, I also rolled lace onto the surface of the porcelain.

After firing I simply knotted ribbon, wool and waxed linen thread for hanging. Et voila!

In the kiln ready for firing.....

All strung up and ready to go...

Some lace texture on the surface....

Do you like the moose shaped one?  I do!

Flowers in Bloom

Our garden has just burst into bloom over the last few days with all the recent hot weather. It's changing daily and it is lovely to observe. As we have only recently moved into this house I can take absolutely no credit for the beautiful flowers, but beautiful they are......

Louise Saxton

I have been studying the work of Melbourne based artist, Louise Saxton recently as part of my year 11 coursework in Studio Arts Textiles.  On Thursday last week I,  along with another teacher took a group of students to visit her 'Sanctuary' exhibition at Heide Gallery, Melbourne.  The students loved her work, as did I, so I thought I would share it here!  I was so keen to find out more about Louise's work that on Sunday (my usual day of pj's and lie-in) I went to Louise's talk at Heide gallery.  What a pleasure it was to hear Louise talk and have the chance to ask questions!

Louise collects pieces of needlework from op shops and cuts out the embroidery motifs, which she then assembles into these wonderful pieces.  It's hard to make out in the images, but these are actually pinned together, and not sewn.  The tiny bits of embroidery are arranged and pinned onto fine tulle then are pinned to the wall.  The pins are silver or brass and give off a lovely sparkle in the gallery lighting, and the artwork sits slightly away from the wall, which creates wonderful shadows.

The colours and textures of these work are just stunning.  It takes Louise a very long time to arrange and pin these works, which I greatly admire.

Louise based these works from the Sanctuary exhibition on old watercolour paintings (see the emu image below).  It was really interesting to hear her talk about her interest in making homage to the anonymous needlework artists and the art of needlework which is a dying tradition in today's society.  She also talked about how she is paying homage to and highlighting the beautiful illustrations of long forgotten naturalists and illustrators.  Interestingly she does not view herself as a textile artist, as she doesn't actually make the embroidery, she re-works them.

You can see more of Louise's work here, and there is also a great on line interview with Louise here.  She has a lovely blog too, which you can find here.

Hope you like!

This is Louise in front of two of her works at Heide gallery.  They are much bigger than the real life birds which makes you really look and consider the detail in the tiny embroidery pieces.  You are constantly moving back and forward when looking at her work, so you can see all the detail and then when you step back you get to see the beautiful birds better.